Long, long ago, in medieval Europe, sailors used to go on long voyages that lasted months. The Captain of the ship used to record everything that happened during the day in a special book. This way, they could come back and tell their sponsors everything that they saw and did, and also carry back information for other explorers and sailors to use.
The book in which the day’s information was religiously recorded, in chronological order (by date), was called the log book.
The log book was one of the most important documents on the ship and the captain guarded it better than most other things.
What does that have to do with computer programs?
When computer programs were written, the same practice was adopted by the tech industry. They kept a record of everything that happened on a computer. Someone tries to turn on the computer – record. Someone enters password – record. You get the idea. Every single transaction is recorded.
All computers and all applications loaded on a computer have their own logs. These logs are used to find out what went wrong, when it does.
On a Windows PC, you can search for “Log” and see a sample of the logs maintained by your machine.
The program that does this recording, or logging, is a logging software.
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